ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

International Angiology 2002 September;21(3):275-6

Copyright © 2003 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

A novel approach to the treatment of recurrent varicose veins

Fassiadis N., Kianifard B., Holdstock J. M., Whiteley M. S.

Department of Vascular Surgery, Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, UK

Back­ground. A varie­ty of approach­es has been ­described for the treat­ment of recur­rence at the saph­e­nof­e­mo­ral junc­tion (SFJ) after pri­mary var­i­cose vein sur­gery most, of them based on dis­sec­tion ­through vir­gin tis­sue. This obser­va­tion­al study ­describes our clin­i­cal expe­ri­ence with the VNUS Clo­sure, a per­cut­ane­ous cath­e­ter-based pro­ce­dure in which the long saph­e­nous vein (LSV) is ablat­ed from with­in by resis­tive heat­ing.
Meth­od. ­Twelve ­patients who had under­gone pre­vi­ous high tie and stripping procedures had 18 legs treat­ed with the VNUS Closure ­between March 1999 and April 2000. In one ­patient VNUS Clo­sure was per­formed also in an ante­ri­or thigh ­branch. Postoper­a­tive ultra­sound scans were per­formed at reg­u­lar inter­vals in order to ­assess suc­cess­ful clo­sure of the LSV.
­Results. None of the ­patients ­showed rec­a­nal­isa­tion of the LSV dur­ing the duplex ultra­sound scan sur­veil­lance and the only com­pli­ca­tion relat­ed to the VNUS Clo­sure noted were sen­so­ry dis­tur­banc­es at the inner thigh in 6 legs.
Con­clu­sion. This new endo­vas­cu­lar tech­nique is the ­authors’ pre­ferred method of treating recur­rent var­i­cose veins where an incom­pe­tent LSV per­sists ­either due to neo­vas­cu­lar­isa­tion at the saph­e­nof­e­mo­ral junc­tion or to a per­sist­ing mid­thigh per­fo­ra­tor.